Letters 126.1–127.13

At last I have received from Africa the letter of your unanimity, and I do not regret the impudence with which, while you kept silent, I pressed my letters on you again and again, so as to earn a reply and to learn that you are safe not from the reports of others but above all from your own words. I remember your little question about the state of the soul — or rather a very great question of the church: whether it has fallen from heaven, as the philosopher Pythagoras, all the Platonists, and Origen think; or whether it is an emanation (aporrhoia) of God's substance, as the Stoics, Mani, and the Spanish heresy of Priscillian suppose; or whether souls are kept in a treasury of God, created long ago, as some churchmen believe in foolish conviction; or whether they are made by God every day and sent into bodies, according to what is written in the gospel: “My Father is working until now, and I am working”; or whether indeed they come by transmission (ex traduce), as Tertullian, Apollinaris, and the greater part of the westerners hold, so that, as body is born from body, so soul is born from soul, and subsists in a condition like that of the brute animals. What I think about this I know I wrote long ago in my little works against Rufinus, against the booklet that he gave to Anastasius of holy memory, bishop of the Roman church, in which, by a slippery and crafty — or rather foolish — confession, while he tried to make sport of the simplicity of his hearers, he made sport of his own faith, or rather faithlessness. I think your holy father Oceanus has those books, for they were published long ago in reply to Rufinus's many books full of slanders against us. Certainly you have there that holy and learned man, Bishop Augustine, who can teach you with the living voice, as they say, and explain his own opinion — or rather, through himself, ours.

I wanted long ago to take up the volume of Ezekiel and fulfil my often-repeated promise to studious readers; but at the very beginning of dictating, my mind was so confounded by the devastation of the western provinces, and above all of the city of Rome, that, as the common proverb says, I did not even know my own name; and for a long time I kept silent, knowing that it was a time for tears. This year, however, when I had finished three books, a sudden raid of barbarians — of whom your Virgil says, “and the Barcaei roaming far and wide,” and holy Scripture says of Ishmael, “he shall dwell over against the face of all his brothers” — so overran the borders of Egypt, Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria, sweeping everything along with it like a torrent, that by the mercy of Christ we were barely able to escape their hands. And if, as the famous orator says, laws are silent amid arms, how much more the study of the Scriptures, which needs a multitude of books, silence, the diligence of copyists, and — what is most proper to it — the security and leisure of those who dictate! So I have sent two books to my holy daughter Fabiola, from whom you can borrow copies if you wish; for lack of time I could not have others written out. When you have read them and seen the entrance halls, it will be easy to guess what the house itself will be. But I trust in the mercy of God, who helped us in the very difficult beginning of that work, that he will also help in the almost final parts of the prophet, where the wars of Gog and Magog are narrated, and in the last parts, where the building, variety, and measurement of the most holy and inexplicable temple is described.

Our holy brother Oceanus, to whom you wish to be commended, is so great and of such a kind, and so learned in the law of the Lord, that without any request of ours he can instruct you and explain our view on all the questions of the Scriptures, according to the measure of our common ability. May Christ our almighty God keep you safe and flourishing to a long age, my truly holy lord and lady.

You often and urgently ask me, Principia, virgin of Christ, to recall in writing the memory of the holy woman Marcella, and to describe the good we long enjoyed so that others too may know and imitate it. I am quite sorry that you urge on one who is already running of his own accord, and think that I need entreaty, when I will not yield even to you in love for her, and I will receive far more benefit than I give by recalling such great virtues. For that I have kept silent until now and let two years pass without a word was not from indifference, as you wrongly think, but from an unbelievable sorrow, which so weighed down my mind that I judged it better to be silent for the present than to say nothing worthy of her praises. Nor will I praise your Marcella — or rather mine, and to speak more truly, ours, and the renowned glory of all the saints and particularly of the city of Rome — by the rules of the rhetoricians, setting out her illustrious family, the glory of her lofty blood, and her pedigree running down through consuls and praetorian prefects. I will praise nothing in her except what is her own, and the nobler in this, that despising wealth and nobility she became nobler by poverty and humility.

Bereaved by the death of her father, she also lost her husband in the seventh month after the wedding. And when Cerealis, whose name is famous among the consuls, sought her very eagerly because of her youth, the antiquity of her family, and her remarkable beauty of body — which is what usually pleases men most — and her self-restraint of character, and when as an old man he promised her his riches and wished to settle a gift on her not as on a wife but as on a daughter, and her mother Albina was of her own accord eager for so distinguished a protector of the widowed house, she answered: “If I wished to marry and did not desire to dedicate myself to perpetual chastity, I would certainly look for a husband, not an inheritance.” And when he sent word that old men too can live long and young men die soon, she replied wittily: “A young man can indeed die soon, but an old man cannot live long.” Rejected with this saying, he became an example to the rest, so that they gave up hope of marrying her. We read in the Gospel according to Luke: “And there was Anna the prophetess, daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher; and she was advanced in age, of many days. She had lived with her husband seven years from her virginity, and had been a widow eighty-four years, and she did not depart from the temple, serving with fastings and prayers night and day.” No wonder she deserved to see the Saviour, whom she sought with so much labour. Let us compare seven years with seven months: to hope for Christ and to hold him; to confess him born and to believe in him crucified; not to deny him as a little child and to rejoice in him reigning as a man. I make no distinction among holy women, as some foolishly do among holy men and leaders of churches; but the argument tends to this: that those who share one labour should share one reward.

It is hard, in a slanderous city — a city in which the people of the whole world once lived, and where vice carried off the palm — where people disparage the honourable and stain the pure and clean, not to incur some tale of evil rumour. So the prophet, as if speaking of something very difficult and nearly impossible, wishes for it rather than presumes it, saying: “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord,” calling “undefiled in the way” of this world those whom no breath of foul rumour has stained, who “have not taken up a reproach against their neighbours.” Of them the Saviour too says in the gospel: “Be well-disposed” — or “kindly minded” — “toward your adversary while you are with him on the way.” Who ever heard anything about this woman that displeased him, so as to believe it? Who believed it without rather condemning himself of malice and slander? By her the pagans were first put to shame, when it became plain to all what Christian widowhood is, which she professed both by her conscience and by her dress. For their widows usually paint their faces with rouge and white lead, shine in silk clothes, glitter with jewels, wear gold on their necks, hang the most precious pearls of the Red Sea from pierced ears, and reek of perfume, so that they may rejoice that they are at last free of the domination of husbands, and look for others, not to serve them according to God's sentence, but to rule them. So they even choose poor men, that they may seem to have only the name of husbands, men who will patiently endure rivals and, if they grumble, will be thrown out at once. Our widow used clothes that kept off the cold, not ones that bared her limbs; she refused gold down to a signet ring, storing it rather in the stomachs of the needy than in purses. Never without her mother, she saw none of the clergy or monks — whom the needs of a large house sometimes required — without witnesses. She always had in her company virgins and widows, and these serious women, knowing that the wantonness of the maids often causes the character of their mistresses to be judged, and that each woman delights in the company of those like herself.

Her love of the divine Scriptures was incredible, and she was always singing: “I have hidden your words in my heart, that I may not sin against you,” and the words about the perfect man: “And his will is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he will meditate day and night” — understanding meditation on the law not as repeating what is written, as the Pharisees among the Jews suppose, but as doing it, according to the apostle's word: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of the Lord,” and the words of the prophet who says: “From your commandments I gained understanding,” so that only after she had fulfilled the commandments would she know that she deserved understanding of the Scriptures. We read the same elsewhere: “what Jesus began to do and to teach.” For any teaching, however splendid, blushes when one's own conscience reproves it; and in vain does the tongue preach poverty and teach almsgiving if a man swells with the riches of Croesus, and, covered with a cheap little cloak, fights against the moths in his silk garments. Her fasts were moderate; she abstained from meat; and she took the smell of wine rather than the taste, because of her stomach and frequent illnesses. She rarely went out in public and especially avoided the houses of noble matrons, so as not to be forced to see what she had despised. She frequented the basilicas of the apostles and martyrs with private prayers, choosing times that avoided the crowds. She was so obedient to her mother that she sometimes did what she did not wish. For when her mother, loving her own blood, wanted to pass over her children and grandchildren and give everything to her brother's children, Marcella would have chosen the poor; yet she could not oppose her mother, and she gave up her necklaces and whatever furniture there was — which would perish anyway — to the rich, preferring to lose money rather than grieve her parent's heart.

At that time no woman of the nobility at Rome knew the monastic way of life, nor did any dare, because of its novelty, to take a name that was then thought disgraceful and mean among the people. She learned from priests of Alexandria — from Pope Athanasius and afterwards Peter, who, fleeing the persecution of the Arian heresy, had taken refuge in Rome as the safest harbour of their communion — about the life of the blessed Antony, who was then still living, and about the monasteries of Pachomius in the Thebaid and the discipline of virgins and widows; and she did not blush to profess what she had learned was pleasing to Christ. Many years later Sophronia and others imitated her, to whom that line of Ennius may most fittingly be applied: “Would that never in the grove of Pelion…”. The venerable Paula enjoyed her friendship; in her chamber Eustochium, the glory of virginity, was brought up; so it is easy to judge what the teacher was, when the pupils were such. The unbelieving reader may perhaps laugh at me for lingering over the praises of mere women. If he remembers the holy women, companions of the Lord and Saviour, who ministered to him from their substance, and the three Marys standing before the cross, and especially Mary Magdalene, who because of her diligence and ardent faith received the name “of the tower,” and was the first, before the apostles, who deserved to see Christ rising again, he will condemn himself of pride rather than us of folly, for we judge virtues not by sex but by the mind. So Jesus also loved John the evangelist especially, who because of the nobility of his family was known to the high priest and did not fear the plots of the Jews, so much that he brought Peter into the courtyard, stood alone of the apostles before the cross, and received the Saviour's mother into his own home, so that the virgin son might receive the virgin mother as the inheritance of the virgin Lord.

So for very many years she passed her life in such a way that she saw herself old before she remembered having been young, praising the saying of Plato, who said that philosophy is a meditation on death. Hence our apostle too: “I die daily through your salvation,” and the Lord, according to the old copies: “Unless someone takes up his cross daily and follows me, he cannot be my disciple”; and long before, the Holy Spirit through the prophet: “For your sake we are put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter”; and many ages later that saying: “Remember always the day of death and you will never sin”; and the very eloquent precept of the satirist: “Live mindful of death; the hour flies; this that I say is taken from it.” So, as we had begun to say, she spent her life and lived in such a way that she always believed she was about to die. She dressed in such a way as to remember the grave, offering a reasonable sacrifice, living, pleasing to God.

Then, when church business had brought me to Rome with the holy bishops Paulinus and Epiphanius — one of whom ruled the church of Antioch in Syria, the other that of Salamis in Cyprus — and I modestly avoided the eyes of noble women, she so pressed, according to the apostle, “in season and out of season,” that her diligence overcame my reserve. And because at that time I was thought to have some name for the study of the Scriptures, she never met me without asking something about the Scriptures; nor did she acquiesce at once, but raised questions on the other side, not to dispute, but to learn by asking the solutions to objections she saw could be raised. What virtue, what ability, what holiness, what purity I found in her I fear to say, lest I exceed belief and cause you greater sorrow by recalling how great a good you have lost. I will say only this: whatever had been gathered in me by long study and by constant meditation turned, as it were, into nature, she tasted, learned, and possessed, so that after our departure, if a dispute arose about some testimony of the Scriptures, people went to her as judge. And because she was very prudent and knew what the philosophers call to prepon, that is, what is fitting in what one does, when asked she answered in such a way that she said even her own views were not her own but mine or someone else's, so that even in what she taught she confessed herself a pupil — for she knew what the apostle said: “I do not permit a woman to teach” — lest she seem to do wrong to the male sex, and sometimes to priests, who asked her about obscure and ambiguous points.

We heard that you at once took our place and attached yourself to her company, and never departed from her by so much as a nail's breadth, as they say, living in the same house, the same room, using one bed, so that it became known to all in that most famous city that you had found a mother and she a daughter. A suburban estate served you as a monastery, and the countryside was chosen for its solitude. And you lived so for a long time that, by imitation of you and by the conduct of many women, we rejoiced that Rome had been made Jerusalem. There were many monasteries of virgins and a countless multitude of monks, so that, because of the number of those serving God, what had formerly been a reproach was afterwards a glory. Meanwhile we consoled our absence by mutual conversation, and what we could not give in the flesh we gave in the spirit. We always met each other's letters, outdid each other in kindnesses, anticipated each other in greetings. She did not lose much who was joined to us by constant letters.

In this tranquillity and service of the Lord, a heretical storm arising in these provinces threw everything into confusion, and was stirred to such a frenzy that it spared neither itself nor any good man. And as though it were not enough to have upset everything here, it brought a ship full of blasphemies into the port of Rome, and at once the pot found its lid. And muddy feet fouled the purest fountain of the Roman faith. No wonder that a painted soothsayer in the streets and in the market beats the backsides of fools and with a twisted stick knocks the teeth of those who bite, when a poisonous and filthy doctrine found at Rome people to lead astray. Then came the infamous translation of the books On First Principles; then the disciple Olbios (“blessed”), truly so by name if he had not stumbled on such a master; then the fiery contradiction of our friends and the disturbance of the school of Pharisees. Then holy Marcella, who had long held back so as not to be thought to act from rivalry, when she perceived that the faith praised by the apostle's lips was being violated in many, so that the heretic drew priests too, some of the monks, and above all men of the world into agreement with him, and made sport of the simplicity of the bishop, who judged others by his own nature, publicly resisted, preferring to please God rather than men.

The Saviour in the gospel praises the steward of unrighteousness because, though against his master, he nevertheless acted shrewdly for himself. The heretics, seeing that great fires had been kindled from a small spark, that the flame long laid underneath had now reached the rooftops, and that what had deceived many could not stay hidden, asked for and obtained letters from the church, so that they might appear to leave in communion with the church. Not much time passed before the distinguished Anastasius succeeded to the pontificate, whom Rome did not deserve to have for long, lest the head of the world be cut off under such a bishop; indeed he was snatched away and taken up for this very reason, that he should not try to bend by his prayers a sentence once passed, since the Lord says to Jeremiah: “Do not pray for this people, nor entreat for their good; for if they fast, I will not hear their prayers, and if they offer burnt offerings and victims, I will not accept them; for I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.” You will say: “What is this to the point?” To the praise of Marcella. She was the beginning of the heretics' condemnation, when she brought forward witnesses who had first been taught by them and afterwards corrected from heretical error; when she showed the multitude of those deceived; when she pressed on them the impious volumes On First Principles, which were shown to have been “corrected” by the hand of the scorpion; when the heretics, summoned by repeated letters to defend themselves, did not dare to come, and the force of their conscience was so great that they preferred to be condemned in their absence rather than refuted in person. The origin of so glorious a victory is Marcella, and you are the head and cause of these good things — you who know that I tell the truth, who know that I tell a few things out of many, so that tedious repetition may not weary the reader and I may not seem to the malicious to be venting my own bile under the pretext of praising another. I will go on to the rest.

The whirlwind passed from the regions of the west to the east and threatened many with great shipwreck. Then was fulfilled: “Do you think the Son of Man, when he comes, will find faith on the earth?” The love of many had grown cold, and the few who loved the truth of the faith joined our side. Their heads were publicly sought; all resources were prepared against them, so that even Barnabas was carried away into that hypocrisy — or rather open murder, which he committed not by force but by will. But behold, the whole storm was blotted out by the breath of the Lord, and the prophetic oracle was fulfilled: “You will take away their breath, and they will fail and return to their dust. In that day all their thoughts will perish”; and the gospel word: “Fool, this night your soul is taken from you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”

While these things were happening in Jebus, a terrible rumour came from the west: Rome was besieged, the citizens' safety bought with gold, and, once despoiled, they were surrounded again, so that after their substance they should lose their lives also. My voice sticks, and sobs interrupt the words as I dictate. The city is taken which took the whole world; indeed it perished by famine before the sword, and scarcely a few were found to be taken captive. The madness of the starving broke out into unspeakable food, and they tore one another's limbs, while a mother did not spare her suckling infant and took back into her womb the one she had shortly before brought forth. “… of them like water round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them.” Who could unfold in speech the slaughter of that night, who its deaths, or match the anguish with tears? An ancient city falls that ruled for many years, and everywhere through the streets and through the houses lie countless lifeless bodies, and everywhere the image of death.

Meanwhile, as happens in such confusion, a bloodstained victor entered Marcella's house as well. Let me be permitted to tell what I have heard — or rather to relate what holy men saw, who were present, and who say that you too were with her in the danger. She is said to have received those who came in with a calm face; and when gold was demanded and she pointed to her cheap tunic to show she had no buried wealth, they still did not believe in her voluntary poverty. They say that, beaten with clubs and whips, she did not feel the torments, but that with tears, prostrate at their feet, she begged them not to separate you from her company, lest your youth should suffer what her old age had no cause to fear. Christ softened their hard hearts, and among bloody swords affection found a place. And when the barbarians had brought both her and you to the basilica of the blessed apostle Paul, to show you either safety or a tomb, she is said to have burst into such joy that she thanked God for keeping you unharmed for her; that captivity had not made her poor but had found her so; that she lacked daily bread, yet, filled with Christ, did not feel hunger; and that she could say in word and deed: “Naked I came out of my mother's womb, naked let me also return. As it pleased the Lord, so it has been done. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” After some months, sound, whole, and vigorous in body, she fell asleep in the Lord, and left you heir of her little poverty — or rather, through you, the poor — closing her eyes in your hands and giving up her spirit in your kisses, while amid your tears she smiled in the consciousness of a good life and of future rewards. This, venerable Marcella, and this, Principia my daughter, I have dictated for you in one short night's work, not with elegance of speech but with the will of a most grateful heart toward you, desiring to please both God and my readers.